Indy Week

Shareholder Barbie Says 'Shape Up!'

Barbie's doll career has been dominating the toy market for decades. Not one to sit idly by, her skill set ranges from teacher to pediatrician, from fashion model to stay-at-home mom, inspiring young children all over the world to live their dreams through play. Mattel has made billions, relying on Barbies success since her start in 1959. One doesn't have to search fer into the world of imagination to think of how "Shareholder Barbie" would respond to the breakdown of standards causing millio...

The Independent Clip-Out Voting Guide

Wake County voters are heading to the polls to vote for school board candidates and three countywide bond issues. Raleigh and Gary residents are also electing mayors and council members, and Raleigh residents also face an additional city parks bond question. For more information or to find out where to vote, call the Wake County Board of Elections at 856-62HO or visit www. wakegov.com/elections.

Choose Your Jazz Adventure

According to Sam Stephenson, project director with the Jazz Loft Project, a program organized by Dukes Center for Documentary Studies in cooperation with the University of Arizona's Center for Creative Photography that is dedicated to preserving and cataloging [W. EUGENE SMITH]'s tapes and photos, some of the apartment's inhabitants were unaware that they were being recorded. "You can look at some of Smith's photos and see microphones sitting out in the open. But other microphones were placed...

Hand of the Man

On July 10, while Richmond's Government Warning and Oakland's Annihilation Time played in the basement, police arrived at the GSS House and issued a nuisance party ticket that eventually cost the residents a combined $800 in legal fees. "We asked the cops what can we do to make this better," [Craig] remembers. "They just looked at us and didn't say anything." The authorities aren't always to blame. Sisters Radial and Roxann Spikula had been hosting house shows for 10 months in a duplex on Fer...

Immigrant Song

This is "Raleigh," the title track from Rey Norteno's 2006 debut. It's earned the band national airplay on Mexican regional radio stations such as the local 96.9 FM La Ley. After last year's airwaves splash, Rey Norteno ("Nortefio King") maintained a strong foothold in the southeastern concert and festival scene, opening for major Mexican acts such as Ramon Ayala, Conjunto Primavera and Beto y sus Canaries. They have an offer in the works to appear on a Hispanic TV morning show. With their cl...

Blues Ain't Nothin' but a Pimp

[JOHN LEE HOOKER JR.] isn't particularly forthcoming about the two decades where he didn't seem to be interested in entertainment, either One moment he's singing beside his dad onstage; decades later, he's finally releasing his first album, 2004's Blues with a Venjeance, the intervening time lost to alcohol, drugs and related jail time. John Lee Jr. didn't turn it around until after his father's death in 2001, but the 43-year old singer makes up for lost time on his first two releases.

Experimental Humans

Now the world is clamoring for Strawberry Jam, the eighth album from Animal Collective, a bright study in taking the band's sound aberrations and folding them into some of the brightest, most enthused pop songs the members have yet written for the band. It comes just five months after Person Pitch, Panda Bear's third solo record, a glowing orchestration of lavish Beach Boys vocals and handclap rhythms. Strawberry lam may not be an attempt to let more people into the Animal Collective fold, bu...

Jazz at a Crossroads

Remember, though, that session gets [Charlie Haden] and [Hank Jones] up to 1960: Haden was 23; Jones, 42. The next three and a half decades saw Haden leading the Liberation Music Orchestra and his Quartet West, while Jones worked as a top-tier sideman and collaborator with the likes of Ron Carter and Jimmy Carter. Then, in 1995, with Jones pushing 80 and Haden nearing 60, they gathered in the studio as a duet, recording Steal Aioay.